Slipspace, the game engine that 343 Industries designed to power what was supposed to be a new generation of Halo games, going beyond 2021’s Halo Infinite, has been dropped by Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine because Slipspace would have made it harder for the studio to port Halo games to PlayStation and other platforms, according to the latest speculation shared by tech experts. Rich Leadbetter, founder of Digital Foundry and Technology Editor for Eurogamer.net, for one, has suggested that the reason for this is pretty clear, with one of the key benefits of Unreal Engine being “deployment across multiple platforms.” A video that involves “Project Foundry,” Halo Studios’ research project for exploring its franchise under Unreal Engine, can be watched below.
“From a multi-platform game development perspective, moving to Unreal Engine 5 would certainly be easier for the developer than porting across the existing Slipspace engine,” Digital Foundry boss Rich Leadbetter told me this morning. “It stands to reason that an engine designed for deployment across multiple platforms would be easier to work with than existing technology built for Xbox and PC.”